Binge drinking, or excessive drinking in one sitting, has proven detrimental to the short- and long-term health of college-aged individuals.

Now it seems the effects of binge drinking could stretch all the way into the classroom, after a Spanish study found college students who binged had more trouble performing simple word memory tests when sober than those who did not binge drink.

Researchers at the University of Santiago de Compostela, led by Maria Parada, provided 122 students — all between the ages of 18 and 20 years old — with trials that tested various types of memory.

Students were first tested in their ability to recall a simple list of words. They were also administered tests that measured the students’ ability to recall a story told to them. Finally, the students’ visual memories were tested by providing four images and asking participants to recall information from the pictures.

Roughly half of the 122 test subjects were self-identified binge drinkers while the remaining subjects self-identified as more casual drinkers.

The difference between the two groups was statistically significant, as those who self-identified as bingers under performed on all word-based tests when compared to their non-binge drinking counterparts.

“[The] results suggest that [binge drinking] subjects need more neural resources to perform the memory task and that they experience greater difficulty in inhibiting interference from the distractors [sic],” the study said.

The study, which will be published in August in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, could not draw a direct cause-and-effect relationship between binge drinking and memory loss. Researchers were able to draw a “clear association” between the two characteristics, however, a result they attributed to the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex regions of the brain.

The hippocampus, which is involved in the formation of both short- and long-term memory, organizing and storage as well as learning, is especially susceptible to damage from drinking, the Galicia, Spain-area researchers stated in their report.

“This is an important topic and a multifaceted problem,” told Thomas Hicklin, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry and behavioral sciences to the Huffington Post. “There’s a lot of peer pressure when it comes to binge drinking, but students need to protect their brains.”

Parada and her team were unable to draw the direct link between binging and the lower performance on the memory tests, despite controlling for possible confounding variables — including differences in intellectual ability, cannabis use, age onset of drinking, family socioeconomic status, family history of alcoholism or psychopathology.

Parada and her team admitted that there could be variables that cause this association that the research did not account for, or that the two characteristics could be related in a slightly different way than what the study suggests. The published report calls for more long-term studies to expound upon the findings of this eye-opening trial.

Still, Parada and her team felt their work was an important first step in protecting students when it comes to their drinking habits.

“It [is] important to determine whether differences in performance between the binge drinkers and non-binge drinkers may have repercussions on academic performance,” the study said.

Amid the biggest scandal in the football program’s history, there is a silver lining for the Ohio State athletic department.

A record 523 scholar-athletes were honored Monday night for academic achievements, including 40 from the “corrupt” football program.

Cornerback Chimdi Chekwa, who was drafted by the Oakland Raiders on April 30, was one of five male finalists for the Big Ten Medal of Honor for his success as an honors student in accounting and his on-field play.

OSU football also was honored by the NCAA on May 17, receiving public-recognition awards for the team’s academic progress rate from 2006–10. These awards are given to teams in the top 10 percent in each sport.

OSU football was one of 14 BCS schools that received this award. Northwestern was the only other Big Ten school to earn it.

Four other sports at OSU — baseball, men’s gymnastics and men’s and women’s tennis also were awarded for their academic progress rates.

For all the trouble the athletic department and football program are in, the coaches of each team have obviously set high academic standards for their players.

Absent from the list of BCS schools honored are football powerhouse schools from the SEC. The only SEC school honored was Vanderbilt, far from a contender in the conference.

OSU’s multiyear APR is 985, 15 points short of a perfect 1,000 and 36 points higher than the average of all Football Bowl Subdivision schools.

That the football team has attended a BCS bowl each of the past five seasons and that its players have exceeded 90 percent of FBS schools in the classroom, is unbelievable — despite the controversy surrounding the program.

Since 2006, the lowest score coach Jim Tressel and his football team received in the single-year APR is 984, which is still in the top 10 percent of all FBS schools.

In the same amount of time, Alabama coach Nick Saban has achieved a single-year APR of more than 980 just once. In 2007-08 he recorded a score of 936.

Tressel has been both a winner at OSU and a mentor beyond football.

When evaluating The Vest’s job status and his body of work, it is important to remember he has made sure his players lived up to their title of student-athlete.

On March 11, 7,000 miles away from the calm waters of Tampa Bay, one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded hit Japan. The resulting tsunami left much of the island in ruins, with more than 15,000 people dead and 9,000 missing.

In response, a team of researchers from USF’s Center for Ocean Technology (COT) went to Japan, where they used remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROV) to assist the Japanese International Rescue Systems Institute.

The five-person team, which used underwater robots to inspect debris and search for bodies in six Japanese coastal areas from April 19 to 23, brought back with them accounts of the rescue effort and immense destruction caused by the disaster.

The team was headed by Robin Murphy, director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) at Texas A&M University and a former USF professor. Eric Steimle, program manager for Applied Environmental and Ocean Sciences, and Karen Dreger, researcher at USF’s COT, brought the SeaMor ROV on the trip. This ROV uses 2-D sonar, ideal for water exploration.

These robots have the ability to explore areas too dangerous for human divers. They are controlled by four to six thrusters, and include manipulators and graspers. Steimle likened the ROV control box, with its joysticks and levers, to a straightforward video game.

“To be able to see through the water, you can use the sonar like a flashlight to identify objects,” said Steimle, who received his Ph.D. from USF in 1999 and is a visiting professor of environmental science and policy at USF St. Petersburg. “When you identify some kind of object and get closer, you can use the camera.”

The SeaBotix SARbot was also used during the trip. This ROV uses distance sonar to explore large underwater areas and has front and rear cameras. Designed for search and recovery missions, the SARbot was operated by Dreger, who received her bachelor’s degree in environmental science from USF in 2007 and her master’s degree in 2010.

During the trip, the research team worked in the fishing village of Minamisanriku. They also worked closely with the Japanese Coast Guard at five sites in Rikuzentakata, surveying acres of debris.

“We spent about six to eight hours working in the field each day,” Dreger said. “We were always busy and on the go. We tried to spend as much time as we could working each day, since our trip was relatively short.”

In Minamisanriku the ROVs were sent out for port inspections. They ensured that there was no debris five meters below the surface that would interfere with boat traffic. The people rely on the availability of the harbor to make a living, as Minamisanriku is predominately a fishing community.

“Based on our work there and our finding and recommendations, the mayor of that city reopened the port,” Dreger said. “It was the first step to bringing in more supplies, but also helping the people who survived return to their livelihood.”

No bodies were found by the ROVs. They did, however, find purses, backpacks, two cars and roofs ripped from homes.

The SARbot was able to explore inside of the houses, which had remained largely intact on the interior. License plate numbers and identification pulled from inside the bags were given to the Japanese Coast Guard to identify possible victims or missing persons.

Witnessing the devastation firsthand was a surreal experience for both Dreger and Steimle, who said it is difficult to describe exactly how bad things were.

“You see it on TV or go online to watch the videos, but you turn the corner coming down into the valley and it looks fake,” Steimle said. “I tried to block it out most of the time, but every now and then I’d think about it or get the local story of what had happened, and it would hit close to home. It was very, very bad.”

Damage varied based on location, as houses at higher altitudes did not get touched by the destructive waters. Some of these untouched areas are separated from the impact zones by mere feet, Steimle said.

Ultimately, the USF research team’s goal was to use the ROVs to help the people of Japan resume their lives after the disaster.

“There are a lot of environmental things you can do with these instruments,” Dreger said, “but to use them for a human aspect is great.”

Steimle said he witnessed the incredible ability of the Japanese to move on and deal with the devastation. Still, he said he hopes that the work the USF COT has done helped ease the road to recovery.

“Using this technology allows for closure,” Steimle said. “It gives people that sense of completeness and helps them move on.”

Students and faculty are working to overcome administrative hurdles to gain approval for a non-Tufts study abroad program in Cuba in an effort to align student travel and study in the country with recently passed federal law.

Several Tufts faculty members conceived of the study abroad program in conjunction with members of the Juan Marinello Cuban Institute for Cultural Research, a postdoctoral research institute focused on the social sciences of culture and culture policy. The institute would serve as the host for the program and local professors would teach courses.

With travel restrictions to Cuba easing since 2001, Tufts students have been able to study in the country for short periods of time under the university’s license for academic travel to Cuba.

Recent U.S. legislation, however, has necessitated that students studying abroad must now demonstrate that classes taken while in Cuba are accepted for credit by their university, according to José Antonio Mazzotti, chair of the Department of Romance Languages. The legislation holds that American students interested in studying abroad in the country are now not allowed to do so unless they can show that they are sponsored by an accredited university to receive academic credit.

Tufts faculty members conceived of the program last year as a fundamentally non-Tufts program after requests to start a Tufts program in Cuba were denied by the administration, according to professor emeritus Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir, a former associate professor in the Department of Romance Languages, who was one of the main faculty members involved in the program’s inception.

Under the proposed program, students would take classes through the Juan Marinello Institute, an organization for which there is no equivalent in the U.S. education system, according to Kaiser-Lenoir, who has served as the primary liaison with the institute.

“[It’s] a mix between a think tank within a field of expertise and an institution for advanced research within the university,” she said.

Questions regarding the research-oriented nature of the institute, however, have complicated the approval process. Tufts’ policy requires that study abroad programs be offered through accredited degree-granting institutions, according to Dean of Academic Affairs for Arts and Sciences James Glaser, and the Cuban institution does not meet this requirement.

The policy ensures the legitimacy of students’ study abroad requests, Glaser said.

“The fact that it’s … an accredited degree-granting [institution] gives us some assurance that certain requirements have been met, and so we don’t have to go into every university and know every detail of how they’re operating,” Glaser said. “The accreditation tells us that this has been looked up by people who are knowledgeable and it’s been given their stamp of approval.”

Kaiser-Lenoir explained that the institute was chosen as the host institution because of its broad research in the social sciences and because professors for the courses offered come from Cuban universities.

“In several trips, we contacted the [Institute] and they were very open to holding meetings with our students … so when we starting thinking about what kind of place we could find to have a program that would offer this kind of very interdisciplinary environment, we thought about [it],” Kaiser-Lenoir said. “There are many others … but the Juan Marinello was the one that had the intellectual range that seemed to fit the students that we would take.”

Since the institute does not grant degrees, discussion is ongoing about changes that would have to be made to the program to align it with university standards and allow Tufts students to attend, according to Glaser.

Thus far, the program’s supporters have worked to demonstrate that the Juan Marinello Institute is comparable to a graduate school under the U.S. higher education system.

If the program is not approved for Tufts students in its proposed form, an alternative would be to seek an affiliation with another institution, according to Mazzotti.

A future possibility would also be to open the program to students from other universities.

Mazzotti emphasized that those involved are receptive to making the necessary alterations to ensure the program’s viability and compliance with university standards.

The International Relations Program, the International Letters and Visual Studies Program, the Latin American Studies Program, the Department of Romance Languages and the Institute for Global Leadership have endorsed the program and are involved in getting administrative support, he added.

Students have also been working to demonstrate interest in this proposal, initiating a petition in mid-April once they learned of the logistical issues that had arisen, according to rising junior Rosario Dominguez, one of those involved.

“What [we’re] trying to do is show the administration that there’s a lot of student support for this, there’s a lot of interest,” rising junior Miguel Zamora-Mills, another petition organizer, said. “We’re trying to show that this would be a fantastic opportunity for Tufts, even if it’s not a Tufts program.”

Dominguez considered a Cuba study abroad program beneficial as a way to educate students about the country.

“This would provide a wonderful opportunity for Tufts students to be in Cuba at a very interesting time in Cuba’s history,” Dominguez said. “Most importantly, as active citizens, we should be responsible … and knowledgeable of relations with Cuba, because … we don’t have this past of the Cold War and Fidel [Castro]. It’s turning a new page in U.S.-Cuba relations, which could potentially be very interesting.”

Kaiser-Lenoir noted that if the program is approved for Tufts credit, it would build on a legacy of student involvement in Cuba starting in 2001.

The program’s organizers, however, are committed to ensuring the program’s availability to Tufts students for credit.

“[That’s] part of what we do here as faculty,” Mazzotti said. “We open possibilities, a place for Tufts students to learn different ways to approach social, cultural and political issues while, in this specific case, taking a first-hand look at historical experiences on environmental care, public health issues, ethnic diversity — in this case Afro-Cuban — and many other aspects of this particular and unique Latin American country.”

Health groups and members of the Illinois Senate opened discussion on a possible increase in soda tax last week to help combat state obesity.

The discussion focused on a proposed amendment to Senate Bill 396, itself an amendment to Illinois revenue legislation,  which would institute a one-cent tax increase per ounce sold of all sugar-sweetened beverages. Items facing the possible increase include soda, sweet iced tea, coffee drinks and some juices, although the bill excludes artificially-sweetened and most diet beverages. Illinois lawmakers last increased soda taxes two years ago, from 1 percent to 6.25 percent, and hope that the additional tax hike will encourage consumers to opt for healthier drinks instead of reaching for their usual sugar fix.

The proposal comes shortly after state income taxes were increased amid a large state budget deficit, but legislators say the soda tax amendment has non-economic motives as well. State Sen. William Delgado (D-Chicago), who proposed the amendment, said the bill seeks to target Illinois’s high obesity rates.

According to the Ilinois Alliance to Prevent Obesity, about three in every five Illinois adults are overweight or obese. Furthermore, sugar-sweetened beverages accounted for 20 percent of weight gained by Americans from 1977 to 2007, according to the American Institute for Cancer Research. A study from Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity found that legislation taxing a penny per ounce, such as the proposed addition to Bill 396, would lead to a 24 percent reduction on sugary drink consumption and obesity, as long as consumers did not replace the beverages with other high caloric foods or drinks.

Decreasing obesity also relieves the heavy burden of related conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes, on the cost of health care. According to IAPO calculations, adult obesity costs Illinois $4 billion in health care costs per year.

Elissa Bassler, chief executive officer of the Illinois Public Heath Institute, said the soda tax alone would not be enough to curb obesity, but that if the government invested the revenue in creating healthier communities, the tax could have the intended effect.

“The costs of obesity are unsustainable. We can’t afford to pay (that much) for a preventable condition,” she said.

Bassler said the IAPO intends to use a significant portion of the revenue generated by the soda tax for preventative measures, such as investing in the availability of fresh and healthy produce, physical education and healthful lunches at schools and safe community parks and bike paths.

However, a study conducted by Northwestern human development and social policy Prof. Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach found soda taxes would predominantly affect low-income households. Schanzenbach said the tax would disproportionately tax the poor, and evidence linking decreased obesity to soda taxes was not concrete enough for the benefits to outweigh a regressive tax.

“The benefits, I think, are not going to be there in terms of obesity, and the costs are going to be that poor people are not going to have as much money in their pockets during this terrible recession,” Schanzenbach said.

A study published by Contemporary Economic Policy, which tracked the impact of soda taxes across the country on the body mass index of the overweight and obese, found that while sugary beverages do affect weight gained, the effect is relatively insignificant.

Schanzenbach also said just because consumers have an incentive to buy less soda does not mean they will have a more healthful diet, as they may choose unhealthy subsitutes for soda.

Betsy Stewart, a self-professed soda addict, said the per ounce price increase would be unlikely to affect her consumption habits. A 12-ounce can of her favorite drink Diet Coke would cost 12 cents more after the tax.

“I don’t think twelve cents would be enough of an increase to make cut back,” the Communication freshman said.

State Sen. Jeff Schoenberg (D-Evanston) could not be reached for comment.

Facebook became the first online service to implement PhotoDNA — a photo recognition software developed by computer science professor Hany Farid in 2008 to quickly identify images of child pornography circulated on the web — to target illegal photos and their distributors, Facebook announced on May 19. Farid, who teamed up with Microsoft three years ago to develop PhotoDNA, said he is happy his tool is being used to “disrupt the global flow of child pornography.”

“It’s amazing to create something that has real-world application,” Farid said as he stepped away from a computer screen displaying complex code.

Since the advent of the Internet, the distribution of child pornography has exploded, according to Farid.

“It used to be that if you wanted this material you had to go to the seedy part of town,” he said. “There was a huge obstacle and barrier to entry if you will. Now of course it’s much easier, and with demand comes supply, of course.”

Although PhotoDNA cost Microsoft millions of dollars to develop, the company donated the software to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for free in 2009, Farid said. NCMEC has since been contacted by law enforcement officials worldwide expressing interest in the program, and NCMEC plans to administer PhotoDNA to companies that request the software for free, Ernie Allen, Chief Executive Officer of NCMEC, said in an interview with The Dartmouth.

Microsoft — which currently uses PhotoDNA in the programs Bing, SkyDrive and Hotmail — hopes that Facebook’s use of the software will pressure other major web services to follow suit, according to Farid.

“I think it would probably be a little grandiose to think [PhotoDNA] will eradicate [the distribution of child pornography on the Internet],” Allen said. “I think it’s going to send a message to the child pornographers and to the pedophiles that the online world is going to become a hostile place to them.”

The software will help locate thousands of pictures of children, and will hold individuals who are using the Internet for child pornography responsible for their actions, Allen said.

Once images containing child pornography are interdicted by PhotoDNA, the issue needs to be addressed from both a policy and legal standpoint, Farid said.

If an online company using PhotoDNA, such as Facebook, discovers an illegal image, it must report the photo to law enforcement officials. The government already receives more reports of child pornography than it can logistically investigate and the deployment of PhotoDNA will likely inundate law enforcers with exponentially more reports, Farid said.

Beyond reporting images of child pornography to government officials, the action that other online companies take is an internal decision, he said.

Although any company that decides to use PhotoDNA is given all pertinent information regarding how to use the program to identify sexual offenders, Microsoft decided to keep the fundamental technology “as confidential as possible” so as to prevent criminals from discovering a way to evade PhotoDNA, Farid said.

The photos that PhotoDNA identify are “the worst of the worst,” Allen said. These “crime scene photos,” are of prepubescent children under the age of 12 being violently sexually abused, according to Allen.

The software is remarkably accurate, Farid said. At Microsoft, 1 billion images have been scanned and not a single false positive was found, he said.

PhotoDNA circumvents various problems regarding the identification of offensive photos by meeting three criteria, according to Farid. PhotoDNA first extracts a signature that does not change as the image is compressed or altered. Second, no two images share the same signature. Third, the signature takes only four milliseconds to compute, which means that a single computer can extract 20 million signatures per day, he said.

The number of images of child pornography that PhotoDNA has identified so far leads Allen to believe that the sharing of such images is a much greater problem than initially expected, he said.

Before Farid was commissioned to develop his software, the U.S. Department of Justice asked major technology companies including Microsoft, Google, AOL, Earthlink and Yahoo! to develop a solution to address the flow of child pornography circulating on the Internet, according to Farid. These companies banded together to form the Technology Coalition, he said.

“They would dutifully meet in Washington once or twice a week for a few years and do nothing — absolutely nothing,” Farid said. “They kept talking about how hard this problem is.”

The coalition struggled to differentiate between acceptable photos and those containing sexual abuse without obstructing the efficiency of Internet programs, Farid said.

The Microsoft team, then headed by Tim Cranton, had read an article in The New York Times that featured Farid’s work in digital forensics. Cranton. eager to enlist the help of a professional well-versed in photo identification technology, invited Farid to a coalition meeting in Washington, D.C., in early 2008, Farid said.

Before Farid joined the team, the Coalition had been unable to develop software capable of scanning the billions of photos that are uploaded to the Internet each day, Farid said.

Farid proposed that the coalition use images in the NCMEC database to eliminate the redistribution of those same photos. The database currently holds 50 million images of child pornography and adds 250,000 each week, according to its website. Because photos are copied and redistributed to hundreds of computers, the identification of one photo as a match to a photo in the database could incriminate hundreds of individuals, Farid said.

“My idea was, don’t try to go after things you haven’t seen before — go after the things you have seen before,” Farid said. “Go after the images that you know are child porn, that you know are horrible, that you know who the victims are and that you know people keep trafficking.”

For many Libyan students living on WSU’s campus, May 31, is fast-approaching. If their frozen funds are not made available by then, or their rent payments deferred, these students may not have a place to live.

In the last update from the Canadian Bureau for International Education, Libyan students were notified that their health insurance would be covered for the month of June but not their living allowance, which will end on May 31, 2011, leaving many students without money to cover their rent.

Mohamed Elcataani, a graduate student in the College of Education, and Khalid S M, Sr Einshadi, a physics and astronomy graduate student, have been working to defer housing payments for Libyan students living on campus, with limited success. “We came here planning to study, get degrees and get back to Libya… we’re proud to be WSU students,” Elcataani said. “(WSU is) not going to lose money, (it’s) going to lose Libyan students.” During the last few months, Libyan students have battled to keep their educations funded after their accounts were frozen following conflicts in Libya. During the financial freeze, citizens of Pullman and its surrounding communities have been collecting food and offering their homes to the students in need.

“The main issue here is the housing issue, which is really difficult for the community in Pullman to take care of.” Elcataani said. “That’s why we are focusing on the university.” If WSU could waive or defer rent for June and July, Libyan students living in WSU housing would have enough time for their frozen funds to be available, he said.

“We need help from the school,” Elcataani said. “We have been paying the bills the last three years without any delay, but now we are in crisis.” In response to the housing crisis, WSU Provost and Executive Vice President Warwick Bayly sent a letter to Libyan students on campus. The letter contained devastating and disappointing information, Elcataani said. “The letter was urging us to leave the housing by the end of this month if you don’t have money,” he said.

Students able to pay for tuition, fees, insurance and other monthly expenses out-of-pocket were encouraged to continue their academic programs at WSU, the letter said.

“WSU is not able to provide stipends, tuition scholarships, free or deferred rent or health insurance to students and families who had previously been receiving through the Canadian Bureau for International Education,” the letter from Provost Bayly said. Those who are not able to pay their expenses were encouraged to change the status of their immigration visas, which are currently valid until this fall, and leave the country, Elcataani said.

“It gives us the indication that there is no help and that it is not just that there is no help, but that (WSU is) kicking us out,” Elcataani said. Elcataani and Einshadi had a meeting with the Graduate and Professional Student Association on Friday, May 20, to discuss the housing dilemma.

After hearing the students’ presentation, the president and vice president of the GPSA decided to go to the Dean of Graduate students to present and discuss the problem.

Despite their efforts on campus to amend the housing crisis, nothing has been accomplished, Elcataani said. Community members have been offering their homes, but, at this time, it is not a practical solution, he said. “The solution we are looking for are for the whole families,” Einshadi said. Elcataani and Einsadi both agree that the community can only help a few families while WSU can help all Libyan students.

“We heard from Libyan students in other states that their universities are supporting them moving the fees,” Einsadi said. In fact, universities from around the country have been helping their Libyan students, he said.

“Universities in Oregon, Dayton University and Ohio State University have delayed tuition for the summer as well as for the fall,” Elcataani said. “We did not ask WSU to do so concerning the tuition. We talked about the housing and food drive, which is an absolutely humiliating situation for the Libyan students.” In addition to support from many of the nation’s universities, Libyan students countrywide received a letter from the American Council on Education. The letter was also addressed to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Treasury. It asked for the government’s support of Libyan students in America. “The presence of international students in our colleges and universities adds much to campus learning communities,” Molly Broad of the ACE wrote. “In light of the uncertain and potentially dangerous situation in their home country, we ask that (the departments of government) move expeditiously to provide assistance to these students and their families in this difficult time.”

The letter also applauded the Obama administration’s push to free Libyan accounts for humanitarian purposes. Though students do not have great support from the university, they do have support from the WSU faculty, Elcataani and Einsadi said. Many faculty members in the Department of Teaching and Learning as well as others have given emotional and logistical support for students that require housing, they said.

Elcataani said the Libyan students at WSU appreciate the supporting efforts of Pullman and its surrounding communities. However, WSU needs to help Libyan students and may indeed hold the only solution to their dilemma, he said.

This Friday, Lee Field will hold over 1,000 students, four instructors, and an endless playlist of Latin rhythms.

N.C. State Health Promotion has teamed up with the Union Activities Board to host a zumba event in conjunction with the Health Promotion’s “Your Health Sustains You” series. By hosting events from health-related trivias to salsa lessons, the series was created in hopes of reducing stress while promoting healthy lifestyles.

“Students wanted to do something for physical fitness,” Marianne Turnbull, Health Promotion director said. “Then overnight, someone [in Health Promotion] just thought, ‘Why don’t we try a large zumba class?'”

However, this is no average zumba class at the Carmichael Gym. N.C. State Health Promotion and UAB are expecting nearly 1,000 students in hopes of breaking a Guinness World Record, naming the event, “World’s Largest Zumba Class.”

While it sounds like an easy task in a school of 37,000 students, menial steps and piles of paperwork are required of the University to validate the qualifications.

“The Guinness Book of World Records has strict guidelines in setting a new world record. It is not as simple as merely saying that you did it,” James Byars of Student Health Service said. “We have to document everything and I mean everything.”

Documentation from independent media outlets, a witness for every fifty participants and a recruited Zumba expert to oversee the event are just a handful of the many tedious requirements necessary for a possible inclusion in Guinness’ book.

In the planning of such a monumental event, many campus organizations collaborated and pitched in to help N.C. State Health Promotion and UAB in the process. Departments and organizations such as the University’s P.E. Department, Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, the Pre-Health Club, PACK Peers and a few student individuals offered to contribute.

Although large numbers of students have already signed up for the event, N.C. State is not running uncontested for the world’s largest zumba class.

“I wholeheartedly believe that we can beat the current record,” Libby Jones, senior in Psychology and Health Promotion intern, said. “However, we have heard that other universities such as Baylor are attempting the same record immediately after us.  We will really need to have a great deal of students, staff, and faculty come out – around 1,200 – if we want to hold on to the record for very long.”

Yet students that have long planned on attending seem hopeful about a possibility of breaking a world record. Daniel Souder, freshman in industrial design, looks forward to campus-wide events and any endorphin-releasing activities to break her academic routines.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the record will be broken,” Souder said. “What better way to relieve stress before exams than an energy boosting experience like our zumba event.I naturally become overwhelmed by final exams and projects, but the Zumba class [will break] up the monotony of schoolwork and studying.”

With a unifying, campus-wide event right before exam week and all-nighters start, aerobic exercise seems to be a good call on behalf of Health Promotion. Aerobic exercises increase production of endorphins while decreasing production of stress hormones – something students get to know very well during the last few weeks of every semester.

“When the deadlines approach and the stress piles high, it is easy to push aside exercise routines,” Souder said. “This event is one way to encourage health during a time when students drink frothy, double shot espressos, snack over delicious bags of chocolate covered pretzels and glue their eyes to text books with the finest print.  Instead, students can shake and salsa the stress away.”

n the continuing power struggle between Facebook and Google, a public relations firm hired by Facebook asked an IU researcher to get involved.

The news organization, The Daily Beast, revealed earlier this month that Facebook secretly hired a public relations firm to plant stories criticizing media giant Google.

One of Google’s most recent features is called Social Circle, an optional search engine that pulls publicly available information from social networks such as Facebook to allow users to see results that were posted by their friends about that topic.

“Google’s basic concern is trying to identify web sites, and perhaps other things, that people find interesting. Their traditional approach has been to have programs read the text and links of a website,” computer science professor Paul Purdom said. “Facebook is getting a lot of data based on people checking `Like,’ and Google has decided that such data could help improve their ratings of web sites.

“Since they don’t have any easy massive access to Facebook’s data, they want to get their own data. Facebook does not want this to happen.”

Computer science associate professor  Minaxi Gupta provided further insight, explaining the situation from the companies’ points of view.

“The problem is that Google and Facebook in particular have complementary views of knowledge about their users’ behavior,” Gupta said. “While Facebook knows where they fit in the social graph of 600 million Facebook users, Google knows where a large fraction of the 2 billion Internet users go. They both want to know what the other party knows, and since a merge is unlikely to work out in the near future, they are using technical means to get what the other party has.”

Concerned about possible privacy violations of Social Circle, Facebook hired public relations firm Burson-Marsteller to ask security experts to ghostwrite stories criticizing the search feature.

One of the experts contacted by Burson-Marsteller was Christopher Soghoian, a Ph.D candidate in the School of Informatics and Computing and a graduate fellow at the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research.

Soghoian was unavailable for comment.

When Burson-Marsteller refused to reveal who it was working for, Soghoian publicized his email exchange with the firm and discussed the exchange through his Twitter account.

“Just pitched by PR firm wanting ghostwrite an anti-Google op-ed for me. I am quite capable of authoring my own anti-google stuff thank you,” his May 3 tweet read.
Burson-Martseller’s email even offered to assist Soghoian in the drafting of the op-ed.

In a New York Times article, Soghoian said he didn’t think the Social Circle feature is particularly problematic. Gupta disagreed and said she feels that Google’s Social Circle is an invasion of privacy.

“So is Facebook’s ‘Like’ button, which is not talked about as much,” she said.

Purdom agrees that both are an invasion of privacy.

“In a general sort of way, I expect all these services invade privacy somewhat,” he said.

The core problem, Gupta said, is the access to information.

“Facebook is upset because it may allow Google to know what it knows,” she said. “Just the same way, Google has a reason to be upset that Facebook is trying to learn what they know through the ‘Like’ button. It is all about advertising money.”

Gupta said the government provides a solution to the problem.

“We need better legislation that allows users to know what they are trading off when they get content for free,” Gupta said. “These companies have reasons to track users to maximize advertising dollars — they cannot offer new products otherwise. On the other hand, users who would rather pay for content than be tracked should have the means to do so.”

The controversy between Facebook and Google rages on and doesn’t appear to end anytime soon. Filippo Menczer, professor of computer science and informatics and associate director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, explained the larger picture.

“Social networks and social media are now the ground where we see the fastest progress in both research and products, so this is where the toughest competition is taking place among the large companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Facebook and Twitter,” Menczer said. “The Burson story seems to be just one piece of
this picture.”

The battle, Gupta said, will continue until some legislation comes into effect.

When Tiffany L. Smalley ’11 receives her diploma at the Commencement ceremony on May 26, she will become the first Wampanoag Indian to graduate from Harvard College since 1665.

During her four years at Harvard, Smalley, a government concentrator with a secondary in ethnic studies, was active in raising awareness of the Native American culture on campus.

She served as co-director of a project that built a wetu—a traditional Wampanoag home—in Harvard Yard. The wetu was constructed near the site of Harvard’s Indian College, which was founded in 1655 to fulfill a statement in Harvard’s Charter of 1650 that called for “the education of the English & Indian Youth of this Country in knowledge and godliness.” The Indian College offered the same classes as the College, but did not charge its students for tuition or housing.

The last Wampanoag Indian to graduate from Harvard was Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, who graduated from the Harvard Indian College in 1665.

Smalley, however, will not be the only Wampanoag Indian to receive a diploma at this year’s Commencement exercises.

Joel Iacoomes, a member of the Wampanoag tribe who died in a shipwreck just before his graduation from the Indian College in 1665, will be honored with a special posthumous degree.

“With the presentation of this degree, we also recognize some of the commitments that were fundamental to the founding of Harvard: a commitment to a diversity of students, a commitment to the communities in which the College was founded, and a commitment to the power of education to transform lives,” Harvard President Drew G. Faust said in an article in the Harvard Gazette.

The incoming freshman class at Harvard is reported to be 1.6 percent Native American.